This Week’s Watcher’s Council Results

The Council has spoken, the votes have been cast, and the results are in for the first Watcher’s Council match up of 2012, carved eternally in the akhasic records of cyberspace.

Perception frequently comes from which end of the telescope you’re looking through, as this week’s winner, The Mellow Jihadi for Me and a Pakistani Captain Chat , a sort of virtual conversation if you will. Here’s a slice:

Pakistan. Are they our friends? Do we have the same goals in mind? Can we partner together? Can we trust them? Are they doing enough to combat their jihadi issue? An interesting write-up in Marine Times touches these questions:

The wind was howling and the snow outside their bullet-pocked bunker lay knee-deep as the men of the 20th Lancer armored regiment bedded down for the night, nearly 8,000 feet up a mountain on one of the world’s most inhospitable borders.

They cheered themselves up by singing songs. Their commander gazed at photos of his 4-year-old daughter on his computer. But as the men chatted, it became clear that they were feeling a bit underappreciated.

Why did the West accuse Pakistan of not pulling its weight in the war on terror, they asked. Hadn’t large numbers of their comrades died at the hands of Islamist militants? Why else were they in this hellish place if not to keep them at bay?

“They say we aren’t doing enough,” said their commander, Capt. Imran Tanvir. “What more can we do?”

Well Capt. Tanvir, let’s chat about Abbottabad, Osama bin Laden’s little summertime retreat. How unlikely is it that no one was aware of Osama in a town that is home to a major military academy, Pakistan’s Westpoint:

In our non-Council category, the winner was Victor Davis Hanson’sWe Give Up submitted by The Watcher. It’s a sobering look at our efforts to use various startegies to deal with the Muslims world and how they’ve failed. A worthy read.

Here are this week’s full results. New Zeal was unable to vote this week, but was not affected by the 2/3 vote penalty: